Dobbs: 'Showdown' really a battle of partisan buffoons

NEW YORK (CNN) -- An incompetent attorney general, who says he wasn't fully aware that nearly 10 percent of the U.S. attorneys who work for him throughout the country were being fired and permitted the 110,000-person Justice Department that he leads to give inaccurate information at best, or simply lie about it at worst, to the Congress and the American people, has the full confidence of the president who's lost the confidence of most people.

And this is what passes for a big-time, dramatic, historic constitutional crisis in 21st century America? You've got to be kidding. This is the most partisan, politically driven administration in history, and we're all supposed to be surprised by its conduct and motivation in the firing of these U.S. attorneys? Please.

Now the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law has voted to approve subpoenas that would force chief policy adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other top presidential aides to testify publicly and under oath about their involvement in the firings.

Guess what? That little ol' subcommittee can't do much of anything to force executive branch employees to testify without the help of the very man and department at the center of this altogether silly and over-baked controversy. That's right; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or one of his U.S. attorneys would have to enforce any subpoenas refused by any of the president's aides.

This is the same Democratic-controlled Congress that millions of voters thought would be so vastly different from the last gaggle of partisan buffoons in the Republican-led 109th Congress. With almost 30,000 young Americans killed or wounded in Iraq, with a half-trillion dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Congress can do no better than publicly fulminate in futility and bray endlessly without effect on the course and conduct of the war in Iraq. Is there no sense of proportion and higher purpose anywhere in Washington?

While this president's so-called free trade policies continue to bleed the nation and the economy of millions of jobs and add to a $5 trillion mountain of trade debt, and while our public schools continue to fail a generation of young Americans, this Congress chooses to invest its energy and time in pure partisan blather and cheap political theatrics.

Is there not one decent, honest man or woman in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, in either party's leadership, who possesses the courage and the honesty to say, "Enough. The people who elected us deserve better"? So far the answer is no. Is there really any wonder that public opinion polls demonstrate that the president and this Congress share equally low approval ratings in poll after poll?

The White House is behaving with utter contempt for Congress and Congress is acting without respect or regard for this president. Could it be that, at long last, they're both right?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.